Abstract

Teams of graduate students from the Departments of Applied Medical Sciences and Biology at the University of Southern Maine (USM), funded by the National Science Foundation’s Graduate STEM Fellows in K-12 Education (GK-12) program, together with faculty mentors design projects related to their graduate research to provide authentic laboratory-based research experiences in rural Maine high schools. Over the course of the school year the high school students gain hands-on experience with research methods that are applicable to current scientific inquiry in the context of immunology and molecular biology. The projects culminate in the opportunity for the students to present their research in poster format at Thinking Matters, a spring research symposium at USM. Throughout this experience the students learn about the scientific process how it is applied to questions posed by scientists around the world today, and in what ways these discoveries contribute to their understanding of the natural world. The scientific questions we have brought to the classroom involve Stephen Pelsue’s laboratory at USM, where they work on elucidating the role of Ttc7 (tetratricopeptide repeat domain7) in immune function. In this particular project the students are learning about the Ttc7fsn/fsn mouse model of lupus, how antibodies are made, the mechanics of autoimmune disease, and about applications of this research and the laboratory techniques used.